


you're sharp alright

by flesh_and_bone_telephone



Category: Taboo (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:37:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9370508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flesh_and_bone_telephone/pseuds/flesh_and_bone_telephone
Summary: She doesn’t think of what she means to do then but the hem of her skirts whirl and she is already close to him. She’s close enough to strike him, if she’d meant to strike him – she doesn’t know what she meant, but “Did you really eat flesh?"_She feels like a brittle thing standing in a storm, asking for lightning to strike her.





	

Her brother has done terrible things, she hears. They speak of him in whispers, his name on their mouths starts fires, is like spark to oil leak. She doesn’t say anything. She lets her husband rave because she needs him angry to do what’s necessary, she tries to hide the way her breath catches when he tells her all the horrible things James is said to have done. It won’t be forever before he understands the look of her not to be one of fear and terror, but the enraptured horror of a woman hearing of an old lover. His name haunts her everywhere. When he’d been dead she could pretend that it didn’t.

But hell opens up and James emerges, he puts his soiled soul through and over the threshold of the church. He makes it empty of God.

At the soiree, he arrives. As starkly other from the guests in their finery, as apart as death. He has a scar like a fishhook around one eye – he doesn’t speak to anyone. He just comes to stare. He always stares, it’s brazenly present, it’s audacious. If anyone were to notice how he looked at her, it’d be just about as incriminating as letting him.

He looks, and he looks. And she goes. He is full of wanting.

When they were children it wasn’t wrong to want him. He isn’t the boy she’d kissed, awkwardly phasing into adulthood and dreaming of the navy, asking, _More?_ He isn’t a man. They say he’s mad – but when he looks at her his eyes are like that of a dog and what is in them is unquestionable. He would make loud declarations, she’d told him. That’s why she came out with him.

Did you really eat flesh? She asks, is surprised by her own want. It must disgust her too, it should - that and his unwashed body, his unspeakable, unapologetic savageness, but James is before her, there’s the promise here that she might know him – even if she doesn’t quite know what he’s become. His eyes haven’t changed. He doesn’t care who sees anymore.

Father chose him over her. Forsook her for a dead boy. James wasn’t alive until their father was dead, and even then – knowing this – father would not admit her in his will.

_When I saw you in the church, I felt as if it was my grave you were walking over._

She was always meek with her looks, always careful. When she spoke to men, when she speaks to her husband – she doesn’t meet their eyes. She’s afraid of what she might forget not to let them see. Come on, let’s go – she says sensibly, she endures. _Why would you want to be a woman to him?_

James no longer cares. She doesn’t have the luxury of meeting his stares, of letting him go on. Madness perhaps came with a sort of freedom. To do as one liked. She hasn’t madness, she only has her grief and her injury. The insult done to her.

Her husband. She only had her husband.

Her husband says that during the prayer, her brother didn’t even bow his head. That his mouth hadn’t even moved.

She doesn’t know what to say to him – to write to him in letters. It’s like writing to the dead. There are so many painfully caught regrets and underneath it the illicit secret, that he’d been between her. He kissed her in the piano room, she’d asked him to. He’d began, like a brother to his sister, caring of her wishes. Then he’d grown shy. And it hadn’t lasted, his shyness. He’d bow his head at her properness and then come again over and over to put it in disorder. They’d kissed everywhere. She’d felt Father’s naturalist tomes had cut into her spine when he’d hiked her up against the shelf, she’d felt the cold leather bound covers of university journals chill her naked thighs. James’ mouth had tasted of the sherry they’d stolen, she’d laughed into it until she couldn’t laugh anymore for what he was doing with her held up like that against the library walls. She’d known the shape of his mouth like it was her own. Her blood.

_Why would you want to be a woman to him?_

James wasn’t shy anymore.

 _I’m a woman to everyone, someone to fuck and discard and use. I’ve made myself soft and pliable, motherly and gentle when all I’ve wanted to do is scream till the walls fall over me._ James knew her, too well. He used to look so sad, his longing boyish and sweet, and she’d scold him for being silly.

_It’s a secret._

_Why?_

_No one would understand. Not here. It’s…ungodly._

_Weren't the first men and women sprung from brothers and sisters? There’s places in the world where sisters and brothers marry. Are they all godless?_

_They must be savages._

_We should go,_ he decided and at her confused stare knelt alongside her body to nip down on her neck like a playful pup. She had muffled her laughter and pulled him over her _. And be savages._

 _Stop._ She hadn’t wanted him marking her neck. Dennis Walter was meant to come calling that evening. James was to be accomplished as men were meant to be, she had no recourse but to be accomplished as women were meant to be – as someone’s wife. To make a home and bear children and be lovely and suffer in her loveliness.

He’d frowned, his mouth an unhappy press. He’d been smooth of cheek, she used to tell him that she was envious, that he'd have no right having such soft skin, smoother than a girl’s.

She can feel her body ringing, alight with tension, a tenseness stretch along her cheekbones, she’s afraid of what they’ll see. She’s held herself so tightly and she feels it tremble in her, in spite herself, her breath shortens. It’s not easy to pretend, it’s laughable how terrible she’d become now at it, with James around. It’s like pretending she hasn’t got a barrel pressed to her temples, going around as she does, pretending at nonchalance while he is indecently insouciant of the consequences . The focus he gives her is touch enough. She can’t help but look, she tells herself not to but she does and her eyes skitter away.

She should laugh at him about their father’s new wife, about how his inheritance was taken from him. It wouldn’t matter. James never truly wanted it for all that he’s willing to go to war for it. It could never hurt him the way it hurt her.

It was James leaving that hurt the worst. He’d left without her and she’d lost him, then he’d died and she’d lost him again – and now he’d come back, warped from killing. She’d endured much without him. Marriage and other humiliations she’d wisely made the best of. She’d maneouvered her way through her own unhappiness, careful of what she said and did. What she could ignore.

She couldn’t ignore him.

It had been a while since she’d glared at anyone, she glared at him in the mirror. His audacity was both threatening and promising – that it was true, what he’d said. About not changing. He’d drunk from her fine crystal ware and she’d tilted her head, defiant and angry in a way she hadn’t been for a long time.

It had been sensible for him to leave. It’d been for the best. It was too naked.

On the steps she sighed, her chest emptying. It felt to have him there, to have his ghost by, absurd. “James, please. Don’t.”

“What? I missed you.” He was without apology, always the way he’d felt for her. He’d never pretended to be sorry. Even less so now. She should hate him for it. “I couldn’t bear to see you alone.”

“Do you know,” she faces him, angry at all the ways he doesn’t surprise her. At the relief it triggers in her, to know that he can still want her. Angry that it helps nothing. Angry because she'd been alone, what would he know of her familiarity with it? “this is so _old,_  I could even laugh at you?”

“And yet you came outside to see me.”

She does hate him. It’s true, he’s always done this. He’s always held her responsible too. “Because otherwise you would’ve come to me and made - _very_ loud declarations.”

He speaks in a strange rumble, in riddles. And yet without subtlelty at all, he doesn’t care to shield it. His voice is deeper, has a cadence and fall to it that speaks of a mad man’s poetics.

“I would yes. Is it my loudness that troubles you?”

He doesn’t give her pause, answering her, promising her. If she challenges him he will answer.

The intensity of his desire should long have ceased surprising her, it is the intensity of her own that does, clamoring, answering.

“In the forest, no.” she presses sharply. “In the jungle, no.”

They have somehow, standing exactly where they are, swayed towards one another. It’s her fault. She watches his eyes as often as she does his dangerous mouth. He doesn’t belong here, it’s a glass house to him. It’s a thing to break.

He searches her eyes and finds the wound.  “You used to straighten your skirts and march away like nothing had ever happened.”

Heat strikes her, her hurt stabbing. He’s teasing her, accusing her, taunting her and her properness. “ _Who_ marched away?”

Being without him, knowing it was for her own good and his – telling herself. It was a separation that he’d chosen, he was the one that left her with father’s eccentricness and her mother’s vapid determination to barter her off. How dare he accuse her. It was him who’d left. She’d had to hear of him perishing, had to hear father rave and talk about him, see him go mad and stifle her own grief so she could let him have his. It wouldn’t do to be mad together.

She steels herself, tries desperately to harden her heart to him, as she’d promised to since she’d heard his name, displacing her soul in god’s halls, in polite society. It is she who holds his gaze, her eyes are too wet. “And thank god you did.”

“God?”

The flat, empty sound of the word. His eyelashes flutter lightly, his blinking – she's done him insult to mention God. It’s frightening, his indignation, his blaspheming. _He doesn’t believe._ Did she? If propriety didn’t hold him back, if religion didn’t, if even God –

She catches herself and insists. “This is _very simple_ , James.”

“Hm?”

“Take away a little ancient history, you live in the East, I live in the West. There are no _practical_ difficulties.”

He nods along with her, making the belligerent hums. He’s growing angry with her, agreeing, it’s mocking – it’s a song she’s singing to herself, that he doesn’t care for. It was better that he were dead, alive he still answers for as little, he might as well be dead. He’s answerable to no one.

She’s losing her composure, it isn’t wise. Her desperation twists deeper, she's going further and further away from solving this peacefully. They stand too closely, she’s been too long away from the guests, they’d notice. They always noticed.

She turns away from him before she's further a fool and his voice gains some volume, his steps follow her and she’s _terrified_. He’s brought it up, he’s calling it awake. He won’t let it be buried.

“Apart from that great big river that connects us.”

She doesn’t think of what she means to do then but the hem of her skirts whirl and she is already close to him. She’s close enough to strike him, if she’d meant to strike him – she doesn’t know what she meant, but “ _Did you really eat flesh_?”

It had sounded like she was skipping, the noise her flat black shoes make on the stone. A rat-a-tat that puts her body within orbit of him. Barely landing on the steps, like a girl with quick heels. It’s like standing before a vaccum, she wants to be dragged away – it’s the secret of her heart that’s carnally known to him, like the shape of her mouth. She's given herself away. But he tilts his head away from her, sustains the distance. She hears her own breathing, she sounds wanting. She stands above him and he moves around her, he keeps the same exact closeness and does not breach it. She knows how she looks, when they were children and they were alone, she’d tease him and ask him sweetly, _Please, James_. She couldn’t help it – looking at him, she feels wild. She’s always felt wild and was very careful of it.

She feels like a brittle thing, standing in a storm, asking for lightning to strike her.

She’s older now, old enough to know better. To know to marshal herself. She can’t. Someone must.

James doesn’t kiss her. He is on the same step now and he speaks slowly, dangerously. “Why don’t you tell your friends that they are sick, and you can come and hear everything.”

She holds her breath. She could go down the steps and be led into the night. It’s a cold night. She wouldn’t have to look back. He could take her to the old house their father gave him, he could talk to her of Africa. It’s an invitation and she knows – she wants to know everything, she wants to know –

The guests are inside, the violinist is playing beautifully, elegantly. She doesn’t know when he started up again. She’s the host. Someone will tell her husband she’s walked outside to speak to her disreptuble brother – strange given the humiliation he’d piled upon her in the courthouse that very morning, it’d be remarked upon. She’s sure he knows, at least he suspects the truth. She has to think of what she’ll tell her husband. She has chosen who she is.

Father isn’t here anymore. No one knows, but they will – if they’re to believe terrible truths about him, they might know what was between them. She couldn’t give them evidence for a conclusion rumor that will very well be started on its own, that would itself put around. _His very being here will affirm it._

If she’s little money and a miserable existence then it is her little money and her misery, her reputation itself is her own. There were some things that must remain lawful, sacred.

James’ eyes are strange, they pierce her. She’d been dead too, she might as well have been – but he’s woken it up, the wanting. The scar around his eye hooks her, the roughness of his body, his tattered clothes, she can smell the alcohol, the sour sweat of him, the bitter places he’s been, feel the darkness in his whisky fogged rumble. The horrible things they’ve done to him, the horrible things he’ll do.

Nothing is sacred to him anymore.

There’s madness in him, he’s been far away from home. Alone. He’s gone savage. She’s barely civilized herself. He was such a sweet boy. Inside the house he’d been careful too, in his looks. The brim of his hat shadows his eyes, they glow there – the direct, eerie stare of an animal, of a well-made killer.

She’s on the brink too, she’s meant to drag him back, not let him take her. No matter what her body wants. She has her sense.

His skin is rough against her palm, she wants to kiss his eyes. She trembles, frightened of him, frightened for him. She hasn’t touched him not once, he’s real. He’s real. He’s lost. In his grief and in his madness. She shouldn’t be out here, indulging like this. She shouldn’t be helping him spiral further. “I would laugh at you,” her eyes are hot again, prickling. He wanted to be the most dangerous thing in the room but the game he played now….Above everything, she loved him, present and absent. She could not hate him, not even if she was meant to. “but you’re not well.”

“Ah-ah.” She ignores his scolding, fiercely adamant, she must – she must –

“And I can’t _stand_ to have you this close to me.” She feels her voice break, hates how she has been warbled with tears so often. More often than is wise. It's dangerously close to begging, she's that sort of woman now and tired of begging. She can't let herself beg him.

James comes after her and he bows his head towards her and he makes her a promise. His fists closes between them but he does not touch her. Not once. Not since the wake when he’d bumped into her like a man with a knife to send home. He’s angry with her, she realizes – he’s been angry with her for a long time – not because he wanted her – no, he’d never be sorry for that – but he’d make her sorry, for not coming down the steps with him. For not answering her own heart. He thinks she’s a coward, he’s going to war with her. He left her and he’d come to collect too. Father is dead.

 _If you want me, then want me,_  he’d hissed.

_I can't._

_Yes,_ he'd cupped the back of her neck, his palms freezing against the skin. Chilled when he'd come running after her, marching through the snow. He wouldn't leave the matter alone. He wouldn't let her, and yet in the end it was he who deserted her forever.  _You can._

“Well, that is a shame isn't it? Because I will always _be -_ " James swears, the leather of his glove crackles with how tightly he holds this oath. A foul, death-touched oath that's no longer willing to be patient with the whims and sweet, gentle promises of a child. "this close to you. Won't I?”

People will talk, he mightn’t care what they’d say. But it’s everything to her station, to what she’s worked hard to build. If a man can devour another man, what shame has he to feel in lying with his sister.

He’s godless. It’s sinful, the thrill that alights in her. The electrifying closeness. She watches his mouth and he doesn’t look from her eyes, he doesn’t kiss her. He doesn’t steal her like his look said, promised he would. He never made her. It was always her choice, always her who asked first. He’d be bold as he liked, but he had still, his excellent discipline. If only barely.

There’s madness in him. A madness she’d avoided before, a wrath that speaks to her own. He’s angry and without master, she’s angry and with too many.

She is to keep away from him.

For both their sakes.

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from the song 'Cherry Tree' by the National. Go listen to it. It's a nice song.
> 
> i'm complete garbage for loving taboo as much as i did. i felt the incest coming, i sensed it - but i couldn't believe it - when it happened, I HOLLERED because I LIVE FOR THIS SHIT MAN IT GIVES ME LIFE.
> 
> Kinda mad i was too slow to nab first place in posting a fic on ao3 for taboo, but to the victors go the spoils. Honestly go read the other fic, read fic, create fic, fuel this trash van with the garbage you know we need.
> 
> honestly, taboo was so good.
> 
> i hope they don't pull a 'the incest wasn't actually incest' spoiler in the future, because the whole incest thing is mouthwateringly angsty. i've been waiting for a Borgia level kind of mess for three thousand years. don't fucking chicken shit out of the incest, writers.
> 
> JUST
> 
> I HAD TO POST SOMETHING
> 
> I HAD TO


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